There are few things more exciting than seeing youngsters exercise their constitutional rights.That was the case in Hamburg, Iowa, on Wednesday morning, when students left school to protest the voters' decision not to allow consolidation of their two school systems, a measure many agree is the last hope in preventing dissolution of the districts.

I’ve lived most of my life in very white places. My hometown, population 200 at the time, was totally white. One black family lived in our small school district in a neighboring town. I got to know a handful of black people in college, but not many,...